Data centers that house large amounts of computing equipment are critical for modern business and commerce systems. Applications such as banking, e-commerce, cloud computing, cloud storage, video sharing, and social media all rely on data centers to implement the functionality. The reliability of such data centers is a function of the reliability of the electric power sources for these data centers.
For enterprise level applications, electricity costs can be a considerable portion of the operating budget. Furthermore, there can be many devices such as servers, storage devices, routers, and other communications and monitoring equipment placed together in racks in an information technology (IT) application. Data centers can house many rows of racks, and thus the power consumption of the data centers is often very high. Additionally, the power demand for both industrial applications and data centers can fluctuate based on various business factors, such as the time of day or season. Thus, managing power becomes an important aspect in many industrial applications, including data center administration. Even further, any energy savings achieved can translate into increased profits for an organization. Additionally, energy savings can provide additional dividends in terms of reduced wear and tear on power sources and reduced cooling costs, adding to the received benefit of an organization.
With data centers, also known as “server farms,” there can be hundreds or even thousands of racks. The devices on the racks typically provide functionality, including the storage, processing, and retrieval of data. Given the power requirements demanded by the rack-mounted devices, reliable and efficient power delivery is crucial for successful operation of the organizations using the data centers. In some cases, the reliability and availability requirements placed on the devices powering the data center infrastructure must meet or exceed predetermined statutory requirements, as is the case for financial institutions.
Regardless of the type of institution, various infrastructure requirements must be met in order to address the important issues of availability, reliability, job load, and other organizational requirements of data centers. For example, the issue of effectively cooling a data center (i.e. the removal of excess heat) is a critical issue which must be addressed to ensure stable and reliable operation of the data center. Each of the many devices in the data center generates substantial amounts of heat, whether the device is a server, a blade, a switch, a backup unit, a communications unit, or another device. The cooling of modern data centers can directly impact the layout and design of the center. Another significant data center design consideration involves providing sufficient power to the data center. Particularly in the case of high-reliability data centers, such as those used for e-commerce, banking, airline reservations, video distribution, and the like, power can be provided by more than one power grid, while for other data centers, power can be provided by a combination of a power grid and locally generated power. Thus, providing reliable and efficient power to the large number of computers and associated equipment in modern data centers or server farms is an important aspect contributing to the performance of these operations.